48 ideas
| 3358 | Metaphysics focuses on Platonism, essentialism, materialism and anti-realism [Benardete,JA] |
| 3312 | There are the 'is' of predication (a function), the 'is' of identity (equals), and the 'is' of existence (quantifier) [Benardete,JA] |
| 3352 | Analytical philosophy analyses separate concepts successfully, but lacks a synoptic vision of the results [Benardete,JA] |
| 3329 | Presumably the statements of science are true, but should they be taken literally or not? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3326 | Set theory attempts to reduce the 'is' of predication to mathematics [Benardete,JA] |
| 3327 | The set of Greeks is included in the set of men, but isn't a member of it [Benardete,JA] |
| 3335 | The standard Z-F Intuition version of set theory has about ten agreed axioms [Benardete,JA, by PG] |
| 3332 | Greeks saw the science of proportion as the link between geometry and arithmetic [Benardete,JA] |
| 3330 | Negatives, rationals, irrationals and imaginaries are all postulated to solve baffling equations [Benardete,JA] |
| 3337 | Natural numbers are seen in terms of either their ordinality (Peano), or cardinality (set theory) [Benardete,JA] |
| 3310 | If slowness is a property of walking rather than the walker, we must allow that events exist [Benardete,JA] |
| 12793 | Early pre-Socratics had a mass-noun ontology, which was replaced by count-nouns [Benardete,JA] |
| 16740 | A power is not a cause, but an aptitude for a cause [Zabarella] |
| 3353 | If there is no causal interaction with transcendent Platonic objects, how can you learn about them? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3304 | Why should packed-together particles be a thing (Mt Everest), but not scattered ones? [Benardete,JA] |
| 22744 | Parts are not parts if their whole is nothing more than the parts [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 3350 | Could a horse lose the essential property of being a horse, and yet continue to exist? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3309 | If a soldier continues to exist after serving as a soldier, does the wind cease to exist after it ceases to blow? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3351 | One can step into the same river twice, but not into the same water [Benardete,JA] |
| 3314 | Absolutists might accept that to exist is relative, but relative to what? How about relative to itself? [Benardete,JA] |
| 3323 | Maybe self-identity isn't existence, if Pegasus can be self-identical but non-existent [Benardete,JA] |
| 3306 | The clearest a priori knowledge is proving non-existence through contradiction [Benardete,JA] |
| 3349 | If we know truths about prime numbers, we seem to have synthetic a priori knowledge of Platonic objects [Benardete,JA] |
| 3341 | Logical positivism amounts to no more than 'there is no synthetic a priori' [Benardete,JA] |
| 3344 | Assertions about existence beyond experience can only be a priori synthetic [Benardete,JA] |
| 3345 | Appeals to intuition seem to imply synthetic a priori knowledge [Benardete,JA] |
| 22748 | Some say motion is perceived by sense, but others say it is by intellect [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22746 | If we try to conceive of a line with no breadth, it ceases to exist, and so has no length [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22741 | The incorporeal is not in the nature of body, and so could not emerge from it [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 16571 | Prime matter is exceptionally obscure [Zabarella] |
| 22747 | A man walking backwards on a forwards-moving ship is moving in a fixed place [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 3334 | Rationalists see points as fundamental, but empiricists prefer regions [Benardete,JA] |
| 22749 | Time doesn't end with the Universe, because tensed statements about destruction remain true [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22750 | Time is divisible, into past, present and future [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22742 | Socrates either dies when he exists (before his death) or when he doesn't (after his death) [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22751 | If the present is just the limit of the past or the future, it can't exist because they don't exist [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22730 | All men agree that God is blessed, imperishable, happy and good [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22739 | God must suffer to understand suffering [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22738 | The Divine must lack the virtues of continence and fortitude, because they are not needed [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22734 | God is defended by agreement, order, absurdity of denying God, and refutations [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 3308 | In the ontological argument a full understanding of the concept of God implies a contradiction in 'There is no God' [Benardete,JA] |
| 22736 | God's sensations imply change, and hence perishing, which is absurd, so there is no such God [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22740 | God without virtue is absurd, but God's virtues will be better than God [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22735 | The original substance lacked motion or shape, and was given these by a cause [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22732 | The perfections of God were extrapolations from mankind [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22728 | Gods were invented as watchers of people's secret actions [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22737 | An incorporeal God could do nothing, and a bodily god would perish, so there is no God [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 22731 | It is mad to think that what is useful to us, like lakes and rivers, are gods [Sext.Empiricus] |